Endless Analog C.L.A.S.P

(closed loop analog signal processor)

   For decades, there’s been the argument of analog vs digital. In the early years of digital audio, the converters were a bit “brittle” sounding, and the technology was expensive, and out of the reach of a mid sized or project studio. The early digital tape machines like the Mitsubishi X80 and the Sony 3324 were six-figure, big ticket items in their day, and over the years they fell out of favor with the major studios as they switched to Pro Tools once the computers & software could handle 24 tracks or better. But the argument raged on…….. analog vs digital. Of course, some studios stuck with analog tape machines, refusing to buy into digital technology. Famed mixing engineer Chris Lord-Alge stuck with the Sony 3348 digital tape machine, transferring analog tape & Pro Tools projects to this machine and preferring to mix from there, loving the workflow and the sound of its converters. He then bought up all the remaining tape stock, and did all he could to hang onto the format, but in recent years has switched to mixing directly from a Pro Tools HD rig to his SSL 4000E console through Focusrite RedNet converters. Others went for a hybrid approach, recording first to an analog tape machine for the basic tracks, then transferring to Pro Tools for overdubs & editing. Nashville producer/inventor Chris Estes was doing the same thing to bring the warmth of analog to his Pro Tools projects. With a father that ran a lab that did missile testing for the Department of Defense, Estes learned about writing computer code and building electronics. He bought a 2 inch Studer analog tape machine, and began to develop C.L.A.S.P, a system that would allow you to record the input signal onto an analog tape machine, pass it on to Pro Tools to be recorded to hard disk with the sound of the analog tape machine, and overdub additional tracks, all with sample accurate monitoring & recording, and true zero latency. One of the first clients was analog gearhead/rocker Lenny Kravitz, who quickly interfaced C.L.A.S.P with Pro Tools and his vintage Studer J37 1 inch 4 track analog tape machine that he purchased from the famed Abbey Road Studios in London that was used to record the Beatles’ legendary “Sgt Pepper” album. Perhaps the most well-known C.L.A.S.P users are the rock band Areosmith, whose long career involved a lot of analog recording. With the High Definition digital converters of today reaching even closer to the resolution of analog tape, and C.L.A.S.P to merge the sound of true analog tape seamlessly into the Pro Tools workflow, perhaps the “analog vs digital” debate can be finally laid to rest.